Giorgio Gomel - Repubblica/Espresso/Manifesto - "Israel today may be
a fortress, but it is not yet a home” stated David Grossman. We look
with the utmost concern to the transfer of the US embassy to
Jerusalem as decided by the Trump administration. We cannot keep
silent in the face of the disproportionate use of force by Israel in
Gaza. The use of live ammunition against civilians is admitted only
if those civilians take part directly in acts of armed violence,
not if they approach or seek to break the border fence with Israel.
We ask that arms be silent and that avenues be sought now and for
the future to attain dialogue, mutual recognition and peace in the
region. (The above is taken from the statement issued on May 15,
2018 by a number of Jewish-Italian intellectuals and political
activists, published in several Italian newspapers and later
endorsed by 400 others). [ak]

MEMO - “’This trip will carry the hopes and dreams of the Palestinian people for
freedom,’ Salah Abdul-Ati, a member of a Palestinian committee tasked with
breaking the siege, told a press conference in the Gaza City on Sunday. He
said the first ship will set sail on Tuesday morning, with a number of injured
Gazans and patients aboard” [ry]

Tayseer Khaled -
IMEMC
"Tayseer Khaled, member of the PLO’s Executive Committee and Head of
the Palestinian Expatriate Affairs Department, has described the
referral of the Palestinian situation to the International Criminal
Court (ICC) as a qualitative step, adding that the leaders have to
be reckoned for the series of crimes they have committed against the
Palestinian people under occupation, including settlement crimes."
ca

Naomi Chazan - The Times of Israel - The arrest of Jafar Farah along
with 21 other protestors in Haifa on Friday night and his subsequent
beating and hospitalization for a broken knee are the culmination of a
series of increasingly violent police efforts to silence what remains
of the opposition in Israel. Systematic attempts to quash alternative
voices have been a norm for quite some time; the events of the past
two weeks have granted a renewed mandate to push almost all divergent
voices beyond the pale. Dissent is being presented as betrayal;
protest is viewed as treason; criticism has become illegitimate.-rh

Dimitri Lascaris -
IMEMC -
"Starting this week, human rights activists will again attempt to break the blockade of Gaza peacefully. Several ships, including a Canadian vessel, are departing this week from Copenhagen and Denmark. They will sail South through Atlantic waters, and then into the Mediterranean, stopping at various ports along the way to draw attention of the world to their voyage, and above all, to the suffering in Gaza." - id

Al-Jazeera -
"An eight-month-old baby girl, died of tear-gas inhalation at dawn, Gaza`s Ministry of Health says, highlighting international outrage over the killings by Israeli soldiers of 60 Palestinians who joined in a massive protest against the opening of the US embassy in Jerusalem." - id

IMEMC -
" “The IPSC condemns this latest massacre of unarmed Palestinians by Israeli occupation forces. This is the single deadliest day for Palestinians in the occupied territories in four years. The ‘Great March of Return’ protests come on the 70th Anniversary of the Nakba – the expulsion of over 750,000 Palestinians, two thirds of the indigenous Arab population, from their homes by Israeli forces between 1947 and 1949." - id

ISM -
International Solidarity Movement -
"Palestinian children released black balloons with Palestinian flags attached into the skies when they reached to Qalandiya.
Hundreds of Palestinians then proceeded to protest against the Israeli occupation. Palestinian press and medics were assaulted by Israeli forces before the march even made its way to Qalandiya. Israeli forces used weapons of violence to suppress a peaceful march, attended by men, women and children. Many were injured by rubber coated steel bullets and foam batons fired by Israeli forces. The amount of tear gas used was shocking." - id

"All That`s Left" - This Jerusalem demo takes place only 24 hours after Jerusalem Day, during which thousands of Israelis marched through Palestinian East Jerusalem and the Muslim Quarter of the Old City shouted racist and hateful slogans. It takes place as Israeli snipers on the Gaza border go on shooting and killing dozens of Palestinian demonstrators. In parallel, American Jewish IfNotNow activists are holding a protest against the Embassy move in Washington D.C.
[bz]

Orly Noy -
+972 -
"That we have succeeded in creating a conscious separation between our lives and the occupation is our tragedy. The boycott movement is simply trying to stop the rest of the world from making the same mistake." - id

PNN -
Palestine News Network -
"World Keffiyeh Day (May 11th) will be commemorated on an annual basis in conjunction with Nakba Day (15 May), in order to show solidarity with the Palestinian cause and struggle." - id

+972 Magazine - Dareen Tatour, 36, hails from the village of Reineh near
Nazareth and is a Palestinian Israeli citizen. She was arrested on October 15, 2015 after publishing a
number of poems on her Facebook page, including “Qawem Ya Sha’abi,
Qawemhum” (“Resist my people, resist them”). She spent three
months in detention until she was placed under
house arrest. Tatour`s attorney
Gabi Laski disputed the poem`s translation to Hebrew which was
presented to the court - done by a policeman with no training in
literary translation. Experts on
Hebrew and Arabic literature, appearing as expert witnesses,
testified about the various meanings of specific words and phrases
used by Tatour in her art, as well as the nature of political
poetry. The court
ruled against the poet. "They say that every poet is a
prophet. Well, I have written a poem about being in handcuffs, and
it came true" said Tatour after the verdict. [ak]

Rabbis for Human Rights / The Action Network - In the highly
vulnerable Palestinian communities pf the the South Hebron Hills,
poverty levels are high and there is no access to basic services
including clean water, sewage and electricity. Children from the
small villages of Tuba and Maghiyir al Abeed attend school at the
nearby village Tuwani. However, the road to the school — forbidden
for Palestinians except for the schoolchildren — traverses closely
to the illegal Israeli outpost "Havat Maon," known for harboring a
number of ideologically extreme and sometimes violent Israeli
settlers. For over ten years these extremists have physically
attacked and verbally intimidated these schoolchildren as they
attempted to walk to school in neighboring Tuwani. Although the
state has clearly acknowledged the ongoing danger to the children,
it has refused to act against the criminal perpetrators. No arrests,
to our knowledge, have ever been made despite clear documentation of
the abuse (see videos). [ak]

Yaniv Halily - Ynet - Singer Netta Barzilai, Israel`s representative
to the Eurovision song contest, was noted as an early favorite to
win the competition, whose final will be held Saturday, with her
song "Toy." In an attempt to prevent that from happening, the
boycott`s organizers called on European residents to boycott the
Israeli song, awarding it zero points. The campaign`s Facebook page,
titled "Eurovision boycott of Israel – ZERO points to the song of
Israeli Apartheid," uploaded a photo of the Israeli crooner from her
days in the Israeli Navy`s band, noting she had served in 2014—
during Operation Protective Edge—and sang "My Sailor, My Angel" to
navy members who later took part in the massacre of children in
Gaza. "The gunboat crews whom Netta Barzilai sent off with her songs
played a part in the Gaza carnage," the Facebook page accused, going
on to say that while Toy was supposedly an anthem of female
empowerment, it did not empower the "women of the Gaza open-air
prison." [ak]

Joshua Leifer -
+972
"Standing Together, a new joint Arab-Jewish movement, is aiming to
transform Israeli politics. It won’t be easy, but the Israeli left’s
first step back to power might be believing that it can win again."
ca

David A Love -
Al-Jazeera
"Israel`s latest attacks on non-violent protesters in Gaza mark a
turning point in the Palestinian movement for justice...With a
younger generation committed to racial justice, social equity and
human rights, attitudes towards Israel`s occupation of Palestine are
shifting, even as many mainstream Jewish organisations remain
silent.

Vincent Warren -
The Arab Daily News -
"Israel has a well-known history of denying human rights advocates and other possible critics of its policies entry to Israel, even if those individuals only seek to visit and meet with Palestinians—whose borders Israeli fully controls." - id

Mondoweiss - The George Washington University student Senate
convened to vote on a proposal to divest from nine companies known
to be complicit in Israeli violations of Palestinian human rights.
Suddenly Members of the anti-BDS group "Canary Mission" showed up,
dressed in yellow chicken costumes. By a rather convoluted logic
this was supposed to deter the students from adopting the divestment
resolution... [ak]

Amjad Iraqi -
+972 -
"The combined efforts of Palestinians in using their bodies, cameras, and voices to support detained protesters made it impossible for the police to hide the severity of their actions." - id

Eileen Fleming -
The Arab Daily News -
"Palestinian Christian author and activist Samia Khoury updates Bob Dylan’s “Blowin’ in the Wind” in response to this week in Gaza."..."How many massacres must we go through - Before they see us as humans?" - id

BDS Movement - The internationally-renowned Brazilian artists
Gilberto Gil and Caetano Veloso have long grappled with the dilemma
of whether or not to perform in Israel. In the July 2015 they
rejected a call by the BDS movement to cancel their Tel Aviv
performance. At the time, Veloso wrote that, though hating the
occupation and the arrogance of the Netanyahu government, they would
go to Israel for the sake of Israelis who oppose the occupation and
love their music. However, while in Israel they were taken to see a
samll Palestinian village on the West Bank. What he saw there led
Veloso to announce in Novemeber 2015 that he would never again go to
Israel - for which the Brazilian Jewish community denounced him as
"having given in to Anti-semitism". Veloso`s long-standing partner
Gilberto Gil did not share this decision, and he scheduled a new
performance in Tel Aviv for July 2018. However, the mass killing of
Palestinian demonstrators on the Gaza border caused Gil to change
his mind and cancel this performance. [ak]

Orly Noy -
+972 -
"The fabrication of criminal cases against activists, particularly anti-occupation activists, has become an almost routine tool. Every one of us could find themselves the target of a similar right-wing campaign." - id